NYPD: 2 NJ terror suspects had tried to go to Iraq

AP PhotoA television crew does a live broadcast outside the home of Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, who was arrested at JFK airport as he tried to board a plane bound for Egypt.

Two New Jersey men who
talked about attacking Americans and sought to fight alongside
terrorists in Somalia were arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport as
they tried to leave the U.S. and join the al-Qaida-affiliated jihadists,
authorities said.

Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 20, and Carlos Eduardo
Almonte, 26, were arrested Saturday before they could board separate
flights to Egypt and then continue on to Somalia, federal officials in
New Jersey and New York Police Department said in a news release.

They
had been under investigation since 2006. New York Police Commissioner
Raymond Kelly said they had traveled to Jordan in 2007 and tried to get
into Iraq, but were turned back.

During the lengthy investigation,
an NYPD undercover officer recorded conversations with the men in which
they spoke about jihad against Americans.

"I leave this time. God
willing, I never come back," authorities say Alessa told the officer
last year. "Only way I would come back here is if I was in the land of
jihad and the leader ordered me to come back here and do something here.
Ah, I love that."

Alessa also was allegedly recorded telling
Almonte that he would outdo Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist
accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last year.

"He's
not better than me. I'll do twice what he did," Alessa allegedly said.

Kelly
said both men are American citizens. Alessa was born in the United
States and is of Palestinian descent. Almonte is a naturalized citizen
who was born in the Dominican Republic.

They are the latest of
many Americans or immigrants to the U.S. accused of joining or trying to
join al-Shabab, a violent extremist group based in Somalia and
connected to al-Qaida. Al-Shabab was designated by the U.S. as a
terrorist group in 2008.

Alessa, of North Bergen, and Almonte, of
Elmwood Park, face charges of conspiring to kill, maim, and kidnap
persons outside the United States by joining al-Shabab. Teams of state
and federal law enforcement agents who have been investigating the men
took them into custody, authorities said. They are scheduled to appear
Monday in federal court in Newark.

Kelly on Sunday cited the
"excellent work" done by the undercover officer, who Kelly said was of
Egyptian descent and in his mid-20s. The officer joined the department
in 2005.

Alessa and Almonte had planned their trip to Somalia for
several months, saving thousands of dollars, undergoing tactical
training and test runs at paintball fields to condition themselves
physically, and acquiring equipment and clothing they could use when
they joined al-Shabab in Somalia, officials said. Both had bragged about
wanting to wage holy war against the United States both at home and
internationally, according to a criminal complaint.

Officials said
the two men were not planning an imminent attack in the New York-New
Jersey area.

A neighbor of Alessa's, Helen Gonyou, said Alessa was
attending school and lived with his parents but that she had not seen
him in a while. They are good neighbors, she said, adding that she
regularly exchanged pleasantries with Alessa's father.

She
cautioned against prejudgment and called the charges an "unfortunate set
of circumstances."

"I just have to hope that if the case is true,
they caught them before they could do bodily harm to anyone," she said.

Last
November, investigators recorded Alessa telling Almonte that lots of
people needed to be killed.

"My soul cannot rest until I shed
blood," Alessa said, according to court documents. "I wanna, like, be
the world's known terrorist."

Almonte told the undercover officer
in April that there would soon be American troops in Somalia, which he
allegedly said was good because it would not be as gratifying to kill
only Africans.

Somalia, an impoverished East African nation of
about 10 million people, has not had a functioning government for more
than a decade, although the U.S. is backing a transitional government
there. The Pentagon's top commander in the region has included Somalia
on a list of countries where clandestine American military operations
designed to disrupt militant groups would be targeted.

Over the
past year, a number of Somali youths have traveled from the U.S. back to
Somalia to fight with al-Shabab insurgents. At the same time,
battle-hardened al-Qaida insurgents have moved out of safe havens along
the Pakistan-Afghanistan border into Somalia, where vast ungoverned
spaces allow them to train and mobilize recruits without interference.

U.S.
authorities, including the FBI, have been working with Somali
diasporas, including a large community in Minnesota, to stem the
radicalization of young people who are being recruited to join the
terror fight. U.S. officials have warned that the recruitment can take
place both over the Internet and through extremists in the U.S.,
including possibly in some mosques.

Officials are concerned that
such radicalized Somalis who are U.S. citizens but are plotting to
attack America, may be able to move more freely in and out of the U.S.,
presenting a threat that would be harder to detect and prevent.

Somalia
welcomed the arrests of Alessa and Almonte.

"Foreign terrorists
here are an obstacle to lasting peace in Somalia. So we welcome the move
and we are calling on all governments to take such steps against
al-Shabab and all terrorists at large," said Sheik Abdirisaq Mohamed
Qaylow, a spokesman for the Ministry of Information.

The arrests
follow two failed terrorist attacks in the U.S. in recent months: an
attempted car bombing in Times Square last month, allegedly by
Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, and the alleged attempted Christmas
Day bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner by Nigerian Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab.